January 23, 2363 AIA

The Colibri

Vas and Reyer were back in the captain’s quarters. He had just finished helping her into their bed. After she was comfortable, he turned, but before he could take a step, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it. She didn’t want him to leave.

She might as well have been squeezing his heart.

“I was only going to get the chair, Alix.”

He heard her take a breath, then she released him. It only took a second for him to move the chair from his desk to beside the berth. He sat down, took her hand, and held it to his lips. When he lowered it again, he didn’t let go.

“I’m buying you a cane, you know,” he said.

Alix’s eyes were closed, but she smiled. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would.” Adan was smiling now, despite everything. Her smile usually had that effect on him. “This is getting ridiculous. You should see yourself, hobbling along. So pathetic.”

“I wasn’t hobbling.”

“Only because I carried you.

“If you bought me a cane, how do you know I wouldn’t use it on you?”

“I’m not that annoying, am I?”

“Sometimes.”

“I still don’t think you would. You might break it, and that’d be a waste of resources.”

Reyer giggled. “Which is almost as bad as permanently maiming a captain.” She sighed. “I love you, Adan.”

Vas couldn’t swallow. His body felt choked up, as if it was being sucked into a pinpoint void in his chest cavity. Speaking would have been impossible, so he forced himself to nod.

When he looked up, he saw she had opened her eyes to watch him.

“You’re not going to be stupid about this, are you, Adan?” she said.

“If I am, I defy you to try and stop me.”

She closed her eyes again before adjusting her head on the pillow. “You made a good choice. It turned out perfectly.”

“Perfectly, huh? Exactly how much Exalt did Jane give you?”

“Everyone is back on board and safe. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He clutched at her hand. “I didn’t want this, Alix.”

“I’ll be fine. You know it. We’ve done this before, Adan.” Her lips twitched. “It’s not like this is the first time I’ve overworked myself. A couple of days of you glaring at me and a few weeks of physical therapy—”

“Forget the cane. I’m buying bubble wrap.”

There was no witty retort this time, only a few seconds of silence, then the sound of her taking another deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Adan. I’m fading…”

“No.” He reached out and brushed the hair out of her face. “It’s all right. You need the rest.”

“You’ll stay?”

He kissed her hand again. “Until you’re out cold. Who knows what you’ll do if I’m not here to watch you?”

The ghost of her smile faded as she drifted off into a drugged slumber. The captain stayed there until her breathing was deep and regular. Only then did he rouse himself. He gently laid her hand on her chest and left the room as quietly as possible.

After he shut the door, he stood in the passageway and stared out the observation window. There was nothing to see but endless black. When he heard a quiet voice call his name, he turned.

Jane, Ciro, and Tennama were all in the main cabin, sitting around the table. Or rather, mostly sitting. Ciro had risen to his feet. He was standing over the table, his face, tense.

Adan walked toward them.

As he drew closer, Jane said, “How is she?”

“Sleeping at the moment,” Adan said.

“How bad is it?” Tennama asked.

Vas ran a hand through his hair. “The pain is limited now, so if she doesn’t move, she can rest. She’ll probably have to be on at least a half dose of Exalt for a few days. Maybe a week.” He looked back toward the observation window. “We’re in velox.”

“I had Lynx take us out,” Ciro said. “We’re running black. I thought we could use some space between us and P5, but I told him not to take us out too far, in case we need to go back.”

“Go back?” Adan’s voice started low, but grew louder as he went on. “They have our IDs flagged in their system. They have Tennama’s name marked, and they have Ryan Barnes’s face on the security cameras. The only one who isn’t somehow compromised is Dr. Jane! If we never see that planet again, you will not hear me cry.”

“Captain,” Tennama said, “we may have to go back.”

“Why?”

It was the miserable Ciro who explained: “We didn’t manage to get Kumar’s files. I’ve finished checking all the nan-cards we brought with us. The prisoner scan was complete—”

“Prisoner scan?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Adan—”

The captain’s arm shot out, pointing back toward his cabin and its sleeping occupant. “She risked her life to save you. She can’t walk! She can barely move—”

“Adan, I’m sorry—”

“No extra risks!”

Tennama stood between the two brothers and took Vas by the shoulder. “Captain—”

“Get your filthy hand off me,” Adan hissed.

A flash of emotion appeared on Anthony’s face, but it vanished before anyone could identify it. The xeno took his hand from Vas’s shoulder. It joined the other in an up-raised motion of surrender, but he didn’t step back, and he didn’t turn from Adan.

“Captain, there wasn’t one moment we were in that room that we weren’t actively searching for the files on Kumar’s murder, but there were two other computers, and your brother gets restless if he isn’t doing four things at once. Since we were already taking a risk, it seemed sensible to gather as much information as we could. What happened down there had nothing to do with Ciro. It was my fault and my fault alone.”

Jane’s voice broke in before Vas could respond. “No, it wasn’t. There was nothing you could have done.”

There was a tense moment where no one said anything, then Adan looked at his brother. “Tell me what happened.”

As Ciro spoke, Adan paced at the front of the cabin. The story was not a long one, but the silence that followed it was.

The captain stopped pacing. “Jane’s right. There was nothing you could’ve done.” He took a deep breath. “Sometimes these things happen.”

“Vas,” Jane said, “do you need to sit down?”

The captain waved away her question. To Ciro, he said, “Did we learn anything?”

“Not much. We had two flags from the facial recognition, but neither of them were Tate, and his retinal was nowhere in the system.”

“So he’s still missing.” Vas rubbed his face with both hands.

“We did find the bloodhound code that took out Jane’s site.”

“It was Supremacy?”

Tennama and Ciro glanced at each other.

“We don’t know,” Ciro admitted. “Well, no. We do know the program was created by the Supremacy, but we aren’t sure who deployed it.”

“Did you find the deployment order?”

“Yes.”

Vas stared at his brother.

Ciro sighed. “It did come from within the Supremacy—”

“Who issued it?”

“Colonel Anderson North,” Tennama said. Vas turned to him. “But Anderson North doesn’t exist. I created him.”

The captain grabbed a chair and yanked it out. “Maybe I do need to sit down.”

“I could use some coffee,” Jane said. “Captain?”

“Please.”

Jane stood up and went over to the food bins while Tennama continued.

“In order to get our xenos into useful positions, I occasionally needed a high-ranking officer to give orders that couldn’t be traced back to us. Anderson North has a background, a service history, even a photo, but he isn’t real, and he shouldn’t have been giving orders.”

“Who else knew about North?”

“Only Harlan”—Tennama tilted his head—“and therefore, the queen.”

“Could anyone else—a human—have found out about him?”

“That would have been almost impossible.”

“Then why are you hesitating to say it was the queen?”

“Captain, I was the queen’s way into the Supremacy. That’s why she had Kumar reinstate my clearance level. She gave me no order to do this. I didn’t even know it had happened.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

Tennama shook his head.

“Is there a reason she wouldn’t tell you?”

“Not that I can think of. Dealing with Dr. Bonumomnes and her site was something I supported wholeheartedly.”

Jane had been about to put a mug in front of Vas but stalled with it halfway to the table. It hovered there for a fraction of a second before she finished putting it down. Her notable silence granted everyone else permission to let the comment pass.

As she walked to her chair, Anthony said, “The only reason she wouldn’t have told me is if it was somehow attached to another matter that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing with me.”

“That’s an interesting point,” Vas muttered. “Tennama, if she did ask you to unleash that bloodhound code, would you have been able to do it?”

Anthony turned to Ciro. Ciro made a face while his head twitched side to side.

“Our expert seems to think it’s unlikely,” Tennama said. “That might be why she didn’t ask me.”

“What makes you think he wouldn’t have been able to do it, Ciro?”

The younger Vas sighed, then looked up at his brother. “Adan, I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it.”

The cabin fell silent. They all heard the soft rattle of Jane’s mug when she placed it on the table.

“I feel like there’s a joke here,” she said. “Someone should be teasing him. Is it Alix who does that? Is that why no one’s saying anything?”

“Doctor, I don’t think even Miss Reyer would have anything to say,” Tennama said.

“No,” Adan said, “she’d say if he couldn’t do it, then it must have been a god.” He leaned forward. “Ciro, are you sure you couldn’t have done it? You broke in today—”

“Not the same thing, Adan. I hunted down a report of an event that happened. I didn’t cause it to happen. And yes, I might have been able to do it myself, but it would have taken an incredible amount of time and almost all my resources.”

“How much time?”

Ciro shrugged. “Writing the program, finding the inlets—you’d have to experiment so you could get it right the first time—a year? Maybe two? ”

Vas looked at Tennama. “Your queen hadn’t been around a year before Jane’s site went down.”

The xeno shook his head.

“Then she must have gotten a god.” Jane picked up her cup.

“Is that possible, Ciro?” Vas asked.

“Oh, yeah. It’d be difficult to find someone that good, but they’re out there. You just have to have the right in.” With everyone peering at him, Ciro felt compelled to add, “Look, I said I was good, I never said I was the best.”

Tennama raised an eyebrow. “I think your confidence led me to assume you were.”

“Oh, no. No, there are people who’re a lot better than me—at least at hacking. I might have had a shot at the title, but I wasted too much time on other skills.”

“Like running the entire tech branch of the Uprising?”

“Yeah. That was a major drain.”

His brother said, “Ciro, do you know these people?”

“Who? The hackers? Only by tags.” He noticed Vas’s thoughtful expression and said, “Why? You found out I’m not the best, and now I’m not good enough?”

“That’s right, I’m trading you in. How do I get the upgraded model?”

“Well, you ingrate, the first problem is finding one of them. That’s the thing about hacking—the best don’t get found out.”

“Then how would the queen have found one? What would have been her ‘in?’”

“Captain, what are you thinking?” Anthony asked.

Vas folded his arms. “Tennama, would the queen have hired the hacker herself?”

The xeno tapped his lips once or twice before answering. “I know she didn't ask me. I doubt she would’ve trusted a human with the job, but none of the other xenos were available. I had only just managed to find Wauters before she was killed, and from what you told me, Levin was tasked with killing the five who knew, so he would’ve been too busy.”

There was a snort from Jane. “The five who knew? You sound like a cheesy mystery novel. You should call them ‘the big five’ and get it done with.”

Tennama’s voice was quiet: “Unless I’m very much mistaken, we did get it done with.”

Jane’s smirk disappeared.

“Oh no,” Ciro said. “You don’t get credit for Sipos.” He pointed to his chest with his thumb and grinned. “That was us.”

The xeno laughed his silent laugh. “Fine then. Do I owe you thanks?”

“Not at all. Killing Sipos was our pleasure.”

“Back to the question,” Vas said.

“Yes, Captain,” Tennama said. “I think it’s possible the queen hired the hacker personally. But it’s only a possibility.”

“Would you rather test the possibility or risk going back to an MI tower?”

Ciro groaned. “I’m sore. That sucked, and it was scary. I’d rather not go back any time soon.”

“We’re running low on emp bombs,” Tennama muttered.

Jane added, “And we should at least wait until Alix is healed enough to save your stupid hides again.”

“Then how would the queen have found a god-like hacker for hire?” Vas pressed.

“It’s hard to say,” Ciro said. “You have to know someone who knows someone. It’s the black-signal. She must’ve had some influence or connection.”

“If it’s influence, could it have been Kumar?” Jane asked.

The captain considered the idea. “Kumar was under scrutiny because she was running for senate leader. It would’ve been hard for her to personally reach out to a criminal—”

“No.” Tennama shook a hand up by his head. “It might have been easier than that. The queen didn’t need Kumar. She already knew someone who knew everything about black-signal markets.”

“Who?” Ciro asked.

But Vas had already caught on: “Carter Levin.”

Tennama said, “Who, in a previous life, was a private assassin.”